How To Close The Skills Gap Of The 'One Percent' Workforce

The Fiscal Times:

As we pore over President Obama's $3.8 billion budget proposal, it's clear that our national debt will increase to a troubling $18.7 trillion by 2021. We don't know whether cutting government spending, raising taxes, stimulating the economy or all of the above can help reduce our debt. But one thing is clear: America is producing an undereducated and underperforming workforce that will not be able to drive economic growth.

Read the whole story: The Fiscal Times

Comments

[Ashok Hegde]

11:59 AM on 02/16/2012

Why would the global economic system need expensive, unskilled labor? It makes no sense. The rational step is to eliminate those jobs with further automation and offshoring. In fact, a caste of management elites exist simply to enable this.

Americans need to wake up...happy days are over. If you're not educated and skilled, and most are not, life will be bleak.

[BBackSoon]

11:38 AM on 02/16/2012

I hear this, 'Unable to find qualified workers' line all the time and it is for the most part bullshite.

Companies want someone with 20 years experience that will work for entry level pay.

[nothingchanges]

05:44 AM on 02/16/2012

This argument can only hold water if people are hired based on their abilities and working knowledge. That, and if they are paid based on their contribution to the company they work for.

I've been around long enough to know that this simply isn't true.

It's no longer "What you know" but "Who you know" that gets you hired in the US today. What you get payed has absolutely no correlation to the work you do, or the benefit to society of your labors.

Case in point.

Sarah Palin.

Makes $125,000 a year, as a full time government employee, governor of Alaska.

Becomes an instant celebrity when asked to run for Vice President.

Quits her "job", now makes $100,000 a day as a public speaker (not everyday, but that's what she gets per engagement). She has reportedly made over 12 million since "quitting" her full time job.

Where is the logic in that?

Don't blame the workers.

Blame corrupt managers, and a society that rewards popularity instead of productivity.

That's where the problems really lie.

[Ashok Hegde]

11:50 AM on 02/16/2012

You really have no clue.

[sim9]

12:12 AM on 02/16/2012

Wasn't BO going to fix this?

No biggie I guess. He never did say when.

[spinotter11]

04:25 AM on 02/16/2012

President Obama has been one of the best presidents ever, but he can't walk on water quite yet.

[castlemike]

09:18 PM on 02/15/2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=suJCvkazrTc

Poor America - P a n o r a m a [B B C] - Broadcast Date: 13th February 2012

[jdevans]

05:48 PM on 02/15/2012

Who do companies think will buy their products when 99% of the workforce is unemployed?

[OldTulsan]

06:18 PM on 02/15/2012

The 99% of the BRIC countries ?

[spinotter11]

04:26 AM on 02/16/2012

Unemployment = 8.3%. Employment = 91.7%.

[Tommy Hammersticks]

10:50 AM on 02/16/2012

Unemployment may be 8.3%, but that does not mean 91.7% of the country is employed. It only means that 8.3% of the people who want to work, are not.

[noam4prez]

05:33 PM on 02/15/2012

This article represents the standard, false, blame-the-victim framing infamously promulgated by Thomas Friedman, and every other spokesmodel for the capitalists.

Education is not the issue. If an American has a PhD, and someone in China has a PhD, guess who gets the job? Hint: the one who works for one-tenth the salary of the other one. The end.

This trope that Americans are out of work because they are dumb or lazy is simply misdirection: blame the victims instead of the capitalists, who have complete control over the economy, and who profit handsomely from high unemployment.

[Ashok Hegde]

11:53 AM on 02/16/2012

The victim is to blame...most have remedial educations and are not worth their labor cost. Hence, the push for automation and offshoring.

Anyone in the US with a good phd is doing fine...the unemployment rate is quite low for college grads.

The issue are the rest of you...those of you who have difficulty passing high school classes, speaking english properly, doing basic quantitative analysis. You guys are getting to be dead weight.

[drp103]

04:07 PM on 02/15/2012

pore?

[spinotter11]

04:28 AM on 02/16/2012

Yes.

[AustrianSpeaker]

02:42 PM on 02/15/2012

The 99% are very happy to sit in the wagon as the 1% pulls it.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

03:00 PM on 02/15/2012

The profits of the 1% are ultimately based on the labor of the 99% no matter how you slice it.
Of course we ARE moving to an economy where only 1% are really needed to support the 99% just as only 2%-3% are needed to work on farms to feed the rest, but we aren't there yet...

[Ashok Hegde]

11:54 AM on 02/16/2012

Not really. With automation and globalization, we need less and less of the 99.

[signgrrl]

03:10 PM on 02/15/2012

other way around

[UnknownSolider]

01:46 PM on 02/15/2012

The truth is that most Americans are afraid to venture out on their own and start their own business. Most of us love the security of having a job in a stable company that offers benefits. One of our biggest obstacles is health insurance, there are numerous people in this country that feel they can not leave their current job because it offers health coverage for their family. If anyone thinks that Corporations do not understand this, and this is one of the reasons they oppose single payer health care plans, you need to get your head out of the sand.

[demilieu]

02:18 PM on 02/15/2012

The vast majority of new businesses fail in the first 3 years. And most people aren't geared for running their own business.

[TulsaMikel]

02:56 PM on 02/15/2012

The vast majority of new pets die in the first 3 years. And most people are not geared for taking care of pets. Are you saying starting a business is a lost cause because most fail, and its hard work? I might fail at something but I would at least like a chance.

[UnknownSolider]

03:12 PM on 02/15/2012

Restaurants fail in the first 3 years, small business overall its about 5 years. However, most people who fail in starting their own business, usually go on to start more by learning from their mistakes.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

02:58 PM on 02/15/2012

People should be afraid starting their own business. Unless you are a venture capital baby doing it on somebody else's money the odds are you are going to lose your house (most small business types get the money to start up by mortgaging their house) or everything else the managed to accumulate in the lifetime.

[UnknownSolider]

03:11 PM on 02/15/2012

That's because too many people want to start off large, as opposed to small. Running a business is a lot of hard thankless work, but if you don't have a job what other choice do you have

[InActionMan]

04:53 PM on 02/15/2012

That is due to a lack proper capitalization and jumping in unprepared. Owning your own business is the only way to be truly fee in America and he only chance most people will have of ever becoming a millionaire.

[demilieu]

01:33 PM on 02/15/2012

And for the 99% of us left who are not so intellectually blessed, we're left to compete for our jobs against foreign workers happy to make 32 cents an hour.

[UnknownSolider]

01:34 PM on 02/15/2012

You have to be ready to hustle if the security blanket of an American Job gets pulled from beneath you.

[demilieu]

01:45 PM on 02/15/2012

Creativity and the gift of innovation are reserved for the same top 1%.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

03:02 PM on 02/15/2012

A typically meaningless statement. 'Hustle'? Ultimately our society is geared to wage labor. We can't have an economy of selling stuff to each other off TV trays.

[OldTulsan]

12:02 PM on 02/15/2012

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts10082010.html
Paul Craig Roberts: America's Third World Economy

"For a number of years I reported on the monthly nonfarm payroll jobs data. The data did not support the praises economists were singing to the “New Economy.” The “New Economy” consisted, allegedly, of financial services, innovation, and high-tech services.

This economy was taking the place of the old “dirty fingernail” economy of industry and manufacturing. Education would retrain the workforce, and we would move on to a higher level of prosperity.

Time after time I reported that there was no sign of the “New Economy” jobs, but that the old economy jobs were disappearing. The only net new jobs were in lowly paid domestic services such as waitresses and bartenders, retail clerks, health care and social assistance (mainly ambulatory health care services), and, before the bubble burst, construction.

The facts, issued monthly by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, had no impact on the ”New Economy” propaganda. Economists continued to wax eloquently about how globalism was a boon for our future.

The millions of unemployed today are blamed on the popped real estate bubble and the subprime derivative financial crisis. However, the US economy has been losing jobs for a decade. As manufacturing, information technology, software engineering, research, development, and tradable professional services have been moved offshore, the American middle class has shriveled. The ladders of upward mobility that made American an “opportunity society” have been dismantled..."

[demilieu]

01:47 PM on 02/15/2012

Bartenders can make pretty good money, and it' a fun job if you like the lifestyle.

[OldTulsan]

05:53 PM on 02/15/2012

Does the U.S. need 14 million bartenders ?

[BBackSoon]

11:43 AM on 02/16/2012

Who can afford to go out and drink? I can buy a six pack for the price of the cover charge or the first beer.

Now lets remember the true costs of a DUI!

Nope I do my drinking at the house.

[TulsaMikel]

02:06 PM on 02/15/2012

Your correct, The shallow grade of the other countries catching up with our productivity has been slowly influencing or economy, and what we can expect from a employer now days. We need a solution to this problem as it will continue to get worse. But the problem we are dealing with now is allot worse, and localized to a little oval office on the east coast.

[OldTulsan]

05:55 PM on 02/15/2012

Corporations have control of the two-party duopoly, three branches of the federal government, and numerous state legislatures through ALEC.

In 2004, the Bush administra­tion stated that the offshoring of blue-colla­r AND white-coll­ar jobs would enrich the U.S. Link available upon request.

In 2011, the Obama administra­tion selected Jeff "I'm a nut on China" Immelt, GE's CEO, a high priest of the offshoring cult, to be the jobs czar.

[Jen Celli]

11:55 AM on 02/15/2012

The average American IQ is 98. The educated "elite" aren't breeders; but the mediocre and largely less intelligent are. We're breeding generations of ideologically challenged and ignorant people and they want to compromise the ability to obtain birth control; so what does that tell you? Serfdom and low wattage labor will become the majority and our Idiocracy will be defined at the lowest common denominator. Nero... Can you hear me now??

[demilieu]

01:36 PM on 02/15/2012

The average American is below average? So, even average is less than average. Uh oh.

[spinotter11]

04:31 AM on 02/16/2012

It certainly seems as if the USA is below average in most respects these days.

[BBackSoon]

11:44 AM on 02/16/2012

Seems like a Math Word Problem doesn't it?

[UnknownSolider]

01:54 PM on 02/15/2012

Something is wrong with the way you think.

[Jen Celli]

02:49 PM on 02/15/2012

You're only saying that because I used big words you couldn't understand. Let me clear it up; the idiots are the majority of the people and they are dumber than the average IQ.

[CapitalismIsCancer]

11:02 AM on 02/15/2012

Those not born-on-third-base have a clear choice in this Capitalist Empire:

Slavery
Extermination..
Or revolution.

[Timma]

08:10 PM on 02/15/2012

Indeed

[CapitalismIsCancer]

10:55 AM on 02/15/2012

This is the American empire in its final throes. Like the Romans and Egyptians before, they intend to create a large abundance of uneducated, disenfranchised slaves to build THEIR pyramids.

What the disenfranchised class can do is empower our young to reject slavery by rejecting the institution: This misrepresented flag, institutionalized religion and learning how to circumvent the police state.

There is a market for an underground education system, underground defense system and an underground economy for the 280 million disenfranchised. We just need to create it and be prepared to die and be killed seeking our emancipation from global Capitalism.

It's time to make this revolution happen, regardless of sacrifice.

[demilieu]

01:37 PM on 02/15/2012

It's still way better here than in Syria, for example. Take a break, have a V-8.

[Timma]

08:10 PM on 02/15/2012

Comparisons to Syria? Get real...

[TulsaMikel]

02:45 PM on 02/15/2012

I appreciate your not the normal kool-aid drinker. Most Liberals have no clue what their defending.
However you know exactly what your defending and how many people would have to be eliminated to bring your version of a society to America.
What great crime has capitalism done to mankind?

[signgrrl]

03:16 PM on 02/15/2012

if you have to ask, you'd never understand.

[themuse]

03:23 PM on 02/15/2012

Profits over humanity and our imminent self-destruction by morally unconscionable corporations.